Somehow, today alone has been more relaxing and refreshing than any weekends I’ve had for a good long while. I got to see Chris before I went to bed and I slept in. I ate good food all day. (Mini pizza and PB/nutella/banana sandwich for lunch, and Chinese for dinner.) I caught up on a lot of blog reading, and played some Minecraft.
I’m thinking that a day off midweek like today would do wonders for my well-being. It’s been a challenging year for me. I switched to the third shift last January, and while it’s been a big help for me financially (in that I can actually survive on these wages with the shift differential) it’s also been very draining on my social life. When you get up and go to work when everyone else is asleep, and vice versa, it gets pretty isolating. I’m generally up at 8 or 9 PM, work 10:30 to 7, and go to sleep anywhere between 10 AM and 1 PM.
I sometimes get things accomplished during the span of daylight I see after work. That is when I get comics done every Monday and Friday morning. It’s also when I tend to do my grocery shopping. But most of the time, it feels more like I’m not really part of the real world. On the occasion that I need to flip back to daytime for a convention or the like, I find myself getting really bummed out when the few days of sunlight ends and I have to flip back again.
The low morale at work plays a part, as well. Working on the lowest rungs at a large corporation can sometimes be tolerable, but it’s very apparent here that we’re all replaceable cogs in this giant machine. I feel valued by my fellow teammates, but from the very top? They could honestly care less about us.
It’s all adding up to a growing bout of depression I’ve been dealing with the last few months. The car accident I was in over the summer was the starting point, I think. I spent two months riding the bus to work and was pretty much miserable every day, since I never went anywhere but work and home. When I did get a new car, having my autonomy and independence back helped a bit. But whatever financial worries I had before are now replaced with new ones. I spent my entire savings on that car ($2200 at the time, yay poverty) and I’ve still got a good chunk to go before I’m done paying for it. And not having a savings cushion to fall back on is scary. It took me a long time to even save that much, what with having to borrow from it now and then to cover emergency expenses when I wasn’t close to a paycheck.
Which all leads to the fact that my work has suffered dramatically this year. For the last few months, it’s been a struggle to just get a comic done twice a week. I almost never feel like drawing, and when I do crack open the sketchbook to doodle during my breaks at work or whenever, I find myself staring at the paper for what seems like an eternity before I doodle something inane like a pony or a female face with a neutral expression. I drew a comic about growing up fat on 24 Hour Comic Day last year that’s just been in a folder for a year because I’m too terrified to ink and color it. I want to start The Hues sooner rather than later, but I’m totally stuck on the specifics of the plot and character arcs.
I’m scared that no one will like it, that they’ll be weird about a white author writing a diverse cast, that I don’t have what it takes to break through the ceiling I’ve hit in this industry after working my ass off at making comics for the last 7 years.
I look at people like Yamino and berate myself for not displaying her passion and not using every single free minute of my time to pump out artwork like she does. I look at people like Rose and Emy and other people I made friends with while I was doing Garanos and realize how out of touch I feel with my peers. I look around at the things I’ve made and I wonder, “when is it going to be my turn?" Certainly, dealing with the ongoing update schedule of Alex’s Guide is stressful for me, but I know I’d hate myself even more if I quit it, because then I probably wouldn’t be producing ANY work.
I think about pursuing a Masters, then I look at tuition for places like SCAD and shrink back into my chair and try not to remind myself of the $16k I still owe in student loans. (Which are in deferment. Not because I asked for it, but because someone at Direct Loans looked at my paperwork when I sent in a request to change my repayment plan and lower my monthly payment, and I imagine they went "Holy shit, this girl doesn’t make any money.”)
I know what needs to change (employment) but actually taking the steps to do so feels incredibly daunting from down here in my pit. Some days are very dark.
But today? Today was alright. Sometimes you’ve just got to take it one day at a time.